VIOLENT crime recorded by police has risen by 12% over the last year, with threats to kill up 23%, it was revealed today.

Offences of wounding, possession of weapons, violence against the person and harassment also increased.

Home Office officials said the apparent increase was due to there now being record numbers of police officers to register crimes.

They insisted that England and Wales were in fact experiencing the longest sustained fall in actual crime in living memory.

The recorded figures showed a total of 1,109,017 violent offences in 2003-04, up from 991,603 the previous year.

It included 955,752 offences of violence against the person, a rise of 14%.

Threats to kill were up 23% to 22,232, serious wounding up 8% to 19,358, racially aggravated wounding up 11% to 4,840 and harassment up 26% to 152,269.

There was little overall change in the number of firearms offences, but there was an 18% jump in the use of imitation weapons to 2,150, and shotguns were used in 720 offences, up 7%.

Sex offences rose 7% to 52,070 - including an 8% rise in rape of women to 12,354 - and criminal damage leaped 9% to 1,205,576.

Overall, the total number of recorded crimes rose 1% to 5,934,580.

But according to the separate British Crime Survey - which questions tens of thousands of people and is used as the benchmark for Government targets - crime has plummeted 39% since 1995.

Fall

Today's BCS results showed a 5% overall fall year-on-year, meaning that Home Secretary David Blunkett has already met one third of his target - announced just 10 days ago - to slash crime by 15% by 2007.

Mr Blunkett welcomed the latest set of figures as "promising".

He said: "Crime overall is falling, as measured by the British Crime Survey, after a peak in 1995."

In a statement Mr Blunkett went on: "The facts are very clear. I did not receive the figures published today until two days after the July 12 spending review, in strict accordance with the rules put in place by this government to ensure that ministers do not get significant advance access to unpublished figures.

"However, I am very happy to aspire to go beyond the 15% formal target, as long as we agree it with local partners and work with police forces and local community safety partnerships to achieve change from the bottom-up, rather than through an additional top-down target.

"Everyone should be congratulating the police on their success in reducing crime by 5% rather than engaging in these sorts of accusations."

But shadow home secretary David Davis said: "All we get from this Labour government is tough talk and no action.

"No amount of Home Office spin can hide the fact that violent crime has risen by a staggering 12% in the last year, breaking the one million barrier, and that overall crime is up yet again under Labour.

"It's about time the Home Secretary stopped swamping us with initiatives and summits and got on with delivering the tough action he keeps promising."

He added: "It also seems astonishing that only days ago David Blunkett promised a 15% drop in crime by 2007, only for the figures to apparently deliver a third of his target in the same week.

"The public at large will simply not believe this supposed fall in crime, and justifiably so."